A Handful of Sand. Marinko Koscec
in the Medveščak neighbourhood was soon populated. Along with three generations of my ancestors, there were also two Jewish girls who he took in as servants as much as out of compassion, and they also became part of the family. No problems were to be mentioned at the table, not even in the frequent periods of scarcity. Nothing was to spoil his mood or appetite. He had another child, a girl, in the early 1930s. He liked to caress her and both his grandsons in passing, amazed each time how much they had grown. Of this numerous household, Father was to be the only one to escape the concentration camps.
At first, it seemed that great-grandfather’s connections would guard his back. Business partners and pals held high positions in the new government of the Independent State of Croatia. His friendships with them now became especially cordial, assisted by many a costly gift. But the neighbours were also enterprising and proved to be even better connected. One June morning in 1942, an extermination team turned up at the door. Within a few minutes the whole household was out in the truck, with bundles of sheets containing what was needed for a new life, and a little more.
I’d heard about the truck before from Father. That morning he’d been sent on an errand, and when he returned he saw it in front of the courtyard fence. He ran after it until his legs gave way, sat down on a bench and cried, and then continued on down to Kačićeva Street. Men in uniforms were carrying out the merchandise and furniture. One of the apprentices spotted him, took him aside, and then out to his home village. His family let Father stay in the hayloft above the stable. He slept there until the war’s end, taking care of the cattle in return. For fear, he only went out at night. He returned to Zagreb at almost at the same time as the liberating Partisans. But he didn’t find anyone he knew. The shop was buried in rubbish since the building was missing all its windows and doors, and the Medveščak house had been occupied by a man with a moustache, lots of little stars and a resolute tone of voice. He arranged that Grandfather be taken in at a refuge for war orphans. After his three years of holidays, he went back to school. The curriculum was modest and the tests could be sat in advance. He soon caught up with his age group and, as an especially gifted pupil, earned a scholarship to study architecture. Towards the end of Father’s studies, Grandfather returned. He was another person altogether as if he’d been taken apart, limb by limb, and reassembled clumsily.
The notebook went into who and what had been in the truck, although the description was rather impressionistic. It was certain that the family was separated at the detention camp–a cluster of barracks somewhere on the outskirts of town, windowless and without beds, surrounded by barbed wire and guarded by thoroughbred German shepherds. When the accommodation was jam-packed, pure-bred Croatian selectors went through and sifted the human refuse, under the supervision of German delegates. They talked politely with every piece of refuse, and all the information was neatly recorded. Those fit for work were rewarded with a trip to Germany. Despite his germanophilia and assurances that he was still strong and healthy, my great-grandfather was rejected and sent to a holiday home somewhere in Croatia with my great-grandmother and their small daughter. Years later, Grandfather met a man who swore that all three had escaped during a mass breakout: they weren’t among the corpses piled up as a didactic installation to intimidate the local population. But another fellow maintained that he’d seen them along with about twenty others lined up on the bank of the River Sava that day; one after another, obediently, they stepped up to an Ustashi sledgehammer and then floated away lifeless down the river.
German technology was far more refined. Straight after their journey in a cattle wagon, Grandmother and Father’s brother were designated for the special showers and ovens. When the cattle were unloaded, they were divided once more. Like Grandfather, Grandmother was pointed to the right; but she didn’t allow her child to be torn from her arms, and so after several lashes of his whip the officer said Na gut, and gave her a towel and bar of soap; Grandfather was sent off with a group to have their heads shaved. This side or that, it all looked the same to him at the time–merely a question of sequence in the schedule of arrivals.
He must have been exceptionally resilient and resourceful. Step by step, he ascended the camp-inmates’ hierarchy. After a series of jobs outside in the rain and snow, with coal, cement and iron pipes, he advanced to a section of the barracks known as Canada after the fur coats which were sometimes found among the surplus possessions temporarily stored there. The punishment for theft was death by hanging, but the odd bauble, gold hairpin or tooth still made its way out of Canada in secret inner pockets to be exchanged for food or tobacco. He didn’t smoke before the concentration camp; he came out a hardened addict. If things had gone on for much longer, he probably would have set up an import-export firm with branches beyond the wire.
Riveted to his bunk with typhus and meningitis, he was among the few who didn’t wander off into the unknown before the Russians arrived, and the only one in his block who was still slightly alive. He wasn’t able to tell them his name or where he was from, so they took him along for a time as they advanced westward. As soon as he was able to walk again, they left him by the roadside. He roamed hungry from village to village, begging for food and sometimes stealing. Until one day he called on the widow of a German soldier and was able to stay on as a farm labourer, later as her husband.
You could make a living in the country in those days. Grandfather even went back to his trading alchemy, turning flour and lard into gold in the nearest city. In many respects, life began anew for him. Everything from before the concentration camp remained in darkness. He would quite definitely have started a new family and a new chain of family businesses if his wife hadn’t hung herself two years after their marriage. What for? They’d found more than comfort and hope in one another; their happiness had been almost tangible; besides, that wasn’t a time for suicide but rather for picking up the pieces of broken lives. But it’s a mistake to always expect people to act logically.
That event gave Grandfather his memory back. Straight after the funeral, he packed all he could into two suitcases and travelled to Zagreb. He searched in vain for his father, mother and sister, or at least some trace of them. But he was able to find his son, with the help of the moustachioed fellow, who in the meantime had earned more little stars and consequently a more fitting house–a donation from well-to-do Jews. Now, as a sign of gratitude, our street was named after the Jewish Communist Moše Pijade. Moreover, thanks again to Comrade Mustachio, Grandfather managed to get permission to move into the vacated house. The building in Kačićeva Street wasn’t available, however, because the fire brigade had set up station there. He was allowed to use two attic rooms of the house; the rest was shared by two families who had fled from the Kozara hills in Bosnia.
Although written in this time of cohabitation, the notebook didn’t say a word more about conditions there. But Father filled in the gaps for me. The main problem, among many, was the bathroom, and in particular the toilet. There were a large number of residents already, and to make matters worse they arranged an informal roster to keep the toilet constantly engaged. This was just one part of their pact against my father and grandfather, whom they openly despised for being tainted with capitalism and urban decadence. They tormented them with loud songs from their home region and heavy smells from the kitchen. This olfactory and acoustic barrage was discharged up the stairs by opening their doors wide, and every now and again a stink bomb was thrown in through the attic window. They egged on their children to imitate Grandfather’s gait, which was contorted from his time in the concentration camp, or to fart loudly, which made them all laugh hilariously. Particularly because Grandfather was easy prey. They knew he would make a little scene as soon as they provoked him: he would roll his eyes, gnash his teeth like an animal and flail his fists in the air, though he wasn’t at all dangerous. Any little thing could irritate him. Then he would pace up and down in the attic for a long time, unable to restrain himself, shouting profanities and biting his arm in frustration.
A part-invalid with a very shady past, the German, as he was dubbed, was unable to find a job. But the gold from his suitcase helped him launch back into business, and into gambling and boozing as well. This bore strange fruit. He would acquire a rare, expensive piece of equipment with the intention of reselling it, which usually didn’t work. He sought long and hard for someone to buy a pre-war British radio, for example, only to exchange it for three telephones. These, in turn, went to pay off a gambling debt. The culmination was the machine for producing ice-cream cones,